Migrate to Shopify - Everything You Need to Know [2026]

Businesses are migrating to Shopify because they want a platform that keeps up with how customers shop today. The challenge is understanding what a migration actually involves.

This guide gives you that clarity. You will see what can be transferred to Shopify, what needs to be rebuilt, and the decisions that protect rankings and revenue during the transition.

If you are planning a full replatform or simply exploring your options, start from the top or jump to the section your team needs most.

Advantages of Migrating to Shopify Plus (2026 update)

Shopify has become the platform businesses choose when they want speed, stability, and a modern customer experience. They continue to innovate at an unprecedented pace unmatched by any other platform. During the 2025 Summer Editions, they announced more than 150 new features across AI, B2B, and international selling, pushing the platform even further. For many brands, this is the point where Shopify becomes the obvious alternative to legacy systems.

By migrating to Shopify, you can now take advantage of:

Quick launch

Most other platform migrations take months or even years. Moving to Shopify is a breeze in comparison. Many brands launch within 90 days, as seen with Skullcandy, which means faster time to market and fewer delays tied to complex development cycles.

Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

According to Shopify, brands save 80% over their legacy implementation costs. Having moved almost all of our Magento clients to Shopify in the past three years, we can attest firsthand that the savings are substantial.

Shopify Plus starts at about $2,300- $2,500 per month for the license. When you use Shopify Payments, the platform waives most third-party transaction fees, and processing rates are lower than the standard Shopify plans.

For high-volume merchants, these reduced fees, combined with included hosting and lower maintenance needs, often result in a lower total cost of ownership compared to running a legacy platform.

Powerful AI features

Advanced AI features from Shopify Magic and Sidekick, with advanced text and image generation. AI tools are part of almost every aspect of your admin dashboard, helping you turn plain words into action.

Shopify store management & optimization solutions

Shopify Plus gives you a complete set of tools that support checkout, promotions, automation, B2B, and everyday operations. Shop Pay delivers one of the fastest and highest-converting checkout experiences available and works across channels, helping repeat customers return without friction. You also get native automation through Shopify Flow, advanced discounts, powerful B2B features, and a large ecosystem of apps that plug in without heavy development work.

The result is a stable foundation that requires no constant maintenance, patches, or upgrades. Your team spends less time fixing the platform and more time driving digital marketing initiatives.

International expansion perks

Managed Markets, the premium tier of Shopify Markets, now reaches more than 150 countries. It handles duties, payments, currency, localization, and compliance. It also reduces the need for multiple stores in regions where simpler management will work.

For global brands, this removes complexity and lowers operational cost.

Disadvantages of Migrating to Shopify

Even with all its advantages, Shopify comes with considerations that leadership teams should evaluate before committing.

Monthly Fee

Shopify Plus has a higher monthly fee than the standard plans, and that number can feel significant at first glance. The real question is whether the total cost makes sense for your volume and your operations. For many growing stores, the fee replaces hosting, security, and maintenance costs, as well as the ongoing development spend needed to keep a legacy platform running.

Once you factor in lower processing rates, reduced third-party transaction fees when you use Shopify Payments, and the time saved by having more work handled by the platform, the math often works in favor of Plus for larger stores with steady growth.

Shopify Payments limitations

Shopify Payments works well for most merchants, but it does have limits. The list of supported countries is growing, yet many regions still require a third party payment gateway.

When you use those gateways, Shopify adds an extra fee unless you use Shopify Payments. Chargebacks also follow Shopify’s standard review process, which can place funds on hold while the case is investigated.

For global brands, this means payment availability and cost can vary by market, and it is important to confirm coverage before launching in new regions.

Front-end customization and content management functionality

Shopify Plus gives you everything you need to sell. However, unless you go headless, there are some limitations for front-end customization and large-scale content compared to open-source platforms like WooCommerce or Magento.

Additionally, custom work often requires Liquid or React skills, and some teams may find the CMS more limited than platforms built primarily for content. The blogging engine works for most stores, but teams coming from WordPress or headless setups may notice constraints.

This is not a deal-breaker, but it is worth knowing that Shopify prioritizes eCommerce performance and stability over open-ended content flexibility. 

What does a Shopify website migration entail?

An eCommerce website migration, or replatforming, is the process of moving your website from one platform to another. In this case, you are moving your data, content, integrations, and core systems from your current platform to Shopify.

Migrating to Shopify incorporates three main areas:

• Migrating your products
• Migrating your customers
• Migrating your tech stack

The timeline depends on the size and complexity of your store. Some migrations take a few weeks, others take several months.

One of the most critical aspects of migrating is having a clear plan that speeds up the process and helps avoid common mistakes.

What a successful Shopify migration looks like

Launching the new Shopify store doesn’t mean your job is done. Over the years, I’ve seen many migrations go wrong. This usually happens when SEO is treated as an afterthought and as a simple data transfer.

The number one goal during a Shopify migration is protecting your rankings, revenue, and improving customer experience at the same level or better than before.

The table below highlights common issues merchants face when the migration is rushed or handled without a proper plan.

How to Migrate Products to Shopify Plus

Before you move anything else, start with your product catalog. It is the core of your store and the foundation for every other part of the migration.

1. Prepare your product data

Companies that have been around for a long time rarely have clean data. A successful migration starts with a full audit of your catalog. This means reviewing titles, descriptions, images, variants, attributes, metafields, bundles, pricing logic, and inventory rules.

This is the moment to consolidate duplicates, clean naming conventions, retire outdated SKUs, and standardize the structure your new Shopify store will use.

Teams usually export everything into a master spreadsheet to catch issues early and set the rules for the import.

2. Align your product architecture with Shopify

Instead of “setting up a Shopify store,” this step is about matching your existing product logic to how Shopify handles items, variants, options, bundles, and collections.

This includes:

• Deciding how to map your current attributes to Shopify fields
• Planning metafields for custom data
• Reviewing how Shopify handles variants and option limits
• Identifying products that need custom apps or scripts
• Deciding whether bundles require automation or third-party tools

This is all architectural work that prevents major rework later.

3. Import your products into Shopify

Once your structure is finalized, you can import products through a CSV or an automated connector. Most established brands use a connector, especially if they are coming from Magento, BigCommerce, Salesforce, Woo, VTEX, or a custom platform.

During the import, you focus on:

• Mapping fields correctly
• Validating images and variants
• Checking SKU integrity
• Reviewing inventory rules
• Confirming metafields imported correctly

You do not want surprises during theme development or launch.

4. Set up your Shopify product variants

Variant logic is one of the biggest structural differences between Shopify and other platforms. Shopify allows each product to have up to three option types, such as Size, Color, and Material. That limit still exists, which means brands with complex catalogs sometimes need to rethink how they structure products.

In the fall of 2025, Shopify Plus removed the old limit of 100 variants per product. With the new Combined Listings system, a single product can now support up to 2,048 variants. Each connected child product can have its own media, description, and merchandising layout, which gives larger catalogs far more flexibility than before.

During this stage, your team should:

• Review every product that requires more than three option types
• Decide how to restructure complex products within the three-option limit
• Use Combined Listings for items with large variant counts
• Confirm that SKUs, pricing, and inventory rules map cleanly into Shopify
• Identify products that will require custom logic or third-party apps for configuration

Getting this right early prevents broken PDPs, missing variants, or SKU mismatches once the store goes live.

5. Organize products into Shopify collections

Collections drive navigation, filters, SEO, and merchandising. Brands with large catalogs often restructure their taxonomy during migration.

This is where you:

• Decide between automated and manual collections
• Standardize naming and hierarchy
• Map products to the correct parent and child groups
• Prepare tags, metafields, and filters that support storefront search

A clean structure improves both UX and SEO.

6. Prepare your product images

Shopify expects optimized, consistent images. Most brands take this opportunity to standardize aspect ratios, update naming conventions, compress file sizes, and replace old product photos.

The goals here are:

• Improve visual consistency
• Reduce file weight for better speed
• Ensure every product has the required angles, lifestyle shots, or swatches
• Match your new theme’s image guidelines

When your data, structure, and images are in place, you can move products into Shopify with confidence.

Once you’ve migrated your products to Shopify, test them to ensure they work correctly. This involves checking that the product details, prices, images, and variants are all correct and that customers can add products to their cart and check out successfully.

How to Migrate Customers to Shopify

Now that your products and inventory are in place, the next step is to bring over your customers so they can access their accounts on your new store.

1. Export customer data from your current platform

Export your customer list from your current eCommerce system. Most platforms allow a CSV export from either the customer area or the reporting section. Make sure all fields that matter to the business are included.

2. Format the customer data

Shopify requires a specific CSV structure. At a minimum, make sure your file has these fields:

• First & Last Name
• Email
• Phone (optional but helpful)
• Company (optional)
• Address
• City
• Province or State
• Zip or Postal Code
• Country
• Tags (optional)
• Accepts Marketing (true or false)

If your legacy platform includes extra attributes that Shopify does not support, you can move them into tags or metafields later.

3. Import customers into Shopify

In Shopify, open Customers and click Import. Upload your CSV and review the preview to ensure the fields are mapped correctly. Shopify will flag formatting issues or missing data if anything needs to be fixed.

Once the file is clean, confirm the import and Shopify will create the customer records. The processing time depends on the size of your list.

4. Review and update customer information

After the import, review a few profiles to confirm accuracy. Check names, emails and addresses. Add tags if needed and move any special fields into tags or metafields.

Cleaner data now means fewer issues later with marketing, tax calculations, and shipping.

5. Notify your customers about the migration

Unless there is a specific business or security requirement, you should never transfer passwords between platforms. Customers will need to create a new password once your Shopify store is live.

You can also add a clear message on the login page, for example:

“Welcome to our new store. If this is your first time logging in, please create a new password using the Reset Password link. Your old password will not work here.“

Send a short announcement before launch and another reminder after launch so customers know how to log in and what to expect.

6. Clean your customer data before you import

Before importing, remove old or invalid emails, merge duplicate accounts and fix inconsistent formatting. A clean list helps with accurate segmentation and email deliverability.

7. Plan customer segmentation in Shopify

If your previous platform used customer groups, plan how these will be recreated in Shopify. Most groups can be handled with tags or Shopify segments.

Better segmentation means better marketing and easier customer management.

Shopify will prompt you to review the file and map its columns to the corresponding fields in Shopify. Ensure that the data is correctly mapped, and if needed, adjust the mappings to ensure accurate import.

After reviewing and confirming the mappings, click on “Import customers”. Shopify will begin importing your customer data. The time it takes to import depends on the size of your file and the number of customers you’re importing.

How To Migrate Your Tech Stack to Shopify Plus

With your products and customers fully migrated, the next step is to move the systems and tools your business relies on every day.

Keep in mind that some of the tools you currently use may not be compatible, may not exist on Shopify, or may already be built in as native features.

Before installing any apps, take a moment to evaluate your stack with a clear plan. A Shopify Plus migration is the perfect time to upgrade, replace, or simplify old workflows instead of rebuilding what you had.

1. Audit your store data

Before considering any integrations, start with your data. Clean data prevents issues later, especially when multiple systems depend on it.

Look at your navigation. Make sure categories and subcategories are accurate and products are mapped correctly.

Review product data. Descriptions, pricing, variants, images, and inventory should be consistent.
Check customer records. Emails, addresses, order history, segments, and marketing preferences should be correct.

A clean data layer makes the rest of the migration faster and far more predictable.

2. Back up your store

Once your data looks right, export a full backup. Products, customers, orders, discounts and any custom functionality that matters.

Some migrations might not need a backup, but if something breaks, this is what protects you. We usually recommend you keep a copy of the old website as a reference.

3. Moving your tech stack to Shopify Plus

Now is the time to build the systems that keep your business running. Payments, search, subscriptions, loyalty, reviews, personalization, email, and customer support all need to be evaluated.

Before choosing anything, run each tool through this quick decision filter:

• Can Shopify replace this with a native feature
• Does this tool have a strong Shopify Plus integration
• What data needs to sync and how often
• Do any fields need to be mapped differently
• Are there compliance or privacy needs
• Can we simplify instead of copying the old setup
• What needs to be tested in staging before launch
• Will API or rate limits matter at your order volume

This prevents you from recreating the platform you just left.

As an agency, we work directly with every tool listed below and have a point of contact for each one, which means we can troubleshoot issues quickly and get priority support when something needs attention.

Payment processing

Payment processing is one of the most debated parts when we work with merchants on a Shopify Plus migration. Many businesses hesitate to switch providers because their current payment fees look better on paper. That hesitation is understandable, but it misses the bigger picture.

If you use an outside processor, you lose Shop Pay, you lose the Shop App, and you lose the conversion lift that comes with one of the fastest checkouts in eCommerce today.

That is like moving to Shopify but skipping the part that makes Shopify so effective. It is the same as running your store on Amazon and refusing to use Prime.

Stripe
Stripe is secure and trusted globally. Shopify Payments runs on Stripe behind the scenes, so stability and fraud protection stay strong.

Shopify Payments
Shopify Payments activates as soon as your store launches. Plus brands pay no transaction fees on Shop Pay or PayPal Express. More importantly, you unlock the full Shop experience, which improves checkout speed, trust, and conversion. This is the main reason many merchants switch to Shopify in the first place.

On-site search and product discovery

Having a decent search is a must. If customers cannot find products through navigation, they depend on search.

While Shopify has its own built-in search, which works ok for smaller brands, most Shopify Plus brands end up using the new go-to option, Athos Commerce, which now includes Klevu and Searchspring. Athos gives you advanced search, merchandising, and product discovery in one platform.

If you want more granular control, Algolia is a more bespoke, but expensive, option for speed and precision.

Subscriptions

Recurring revenue only works if your subscription platform plays nicely with Shopify.

Recharge
Recharge is robust and widely used by Plus brands.

Skio
A faster, modern alternative with passwordless login and lower friction for subscribers.

Loyalty programs

Loyalty drives repeat purchases, especially when it integrates across your stack.

LoyaltyLion
Personalized loyalty and rewards for Plus brands.

Yotpo Loyalty
A strong option if you already use Yotpo reviews or want an all-in-one ecosystem.

Reviews

Reviews drive conversion more than any product description.

Yotpo
Supports visual reviews with strong Shopify Plus integrations.

Okendo
Fast, lightweight, and trusted by many growth-stage DTC and Plus brands.

Personalization

Personalization improves the shopping experience and boosts conversions. In addition to native Shopify personalization tools, two companies we recommend are:

Nosto
Great for product recommendations, merchandising and behavior based personalization.

Dynamic Yield
Enterprise-level personalization with deeper testing and segmentation options.

Email marketing and customer data

Email and SMS sit at the center of retention. Most Plus brands pair one of these with their CRM or CDP.

Klaviyo
The most popular choice for Shopify Plus with real-time data sync.

Bloomreach
A great fit for brands with large catalogs and advanced personalization needs.

Both integrate cleanly with Shopify and work well with your broader data ecosystem.

Customer support

Support teams need quick access to orders, customer history, and tracking information.

Gorgias
Brings all channels into one view and shows customer data instantly. Connects to Shopify Plus in under a minute.

The operations layer that brands cannot ignore

While choosing the right Shopify Apps and solutions is important, operational systems matter even more.

They control inventory, fulfillment, accounting, product information, and customer data. When these platforms sync correctly, Shopify becomes a serious growth engine. When they do not, everything slows down, and problems spread fast.

This is the part of the migration where planning matters most.

Order management systems (OMS)

Your OMS decides how orders move from Shopify into the rest of your business. When this connection is not set up correctly, you see delayed shipments, mismatched inventory, missing tracking numbers, and confused customers.

If your business uses platforms such as Brightpearl, Linnworks, Extensiv, Acumatica, or NetSuite, take time to confirm how orders should sync, how fields map, how split shipments work, and how returns flow back into Shopify. A clean order flow protects your fulfillment and your customer experience.

ERP and finance systems

Your ERP is the core of your financial and operational processes. It controls accounting, purchasing, inventory accuracy, and reporting. If the sync between Shopify and your ERP is wrong, your numbers will never line up.

This is where one of our favorite partners, Patchworks, becomes important. Patchworks connects Shopify to ERP platforms without brittle custom code. It handles mapping, syncing, transformation logic, and large-scale data flows so your finance team can trust every number.

Popular ERP platforms Shero has experience with include NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Odoo, and Acumatica.

PIM systems

If you manage a large catalog or complex attributes, your PIM remains the source of truth. Shopify becomes the destination that receives the final product data.

Tools such as Akeneo, Salsify, Pimberly, and Plytix control enriched product information, attributes, variant logic, and bundles. The key is defining which fields the PIM owns and which fields Shopify should control. Planning your Shopify metafields and attribute mapping early will save you a lot of cleanup later.

Shipping and fulfillment

Your warehouse needs accurate, real-time data from Shopify. If the WMS does not receive clean order details, tracking updates, or restock events, customer experience suffers immediately.

Many of our Shopify clients rely on tools such as ShipStation, ShipHero, ShipBob or custom 3PL systems. Tracking data should return to Shopify automatically. Locations should route correctly. Restock and return rules must behave predictably.

CRM and customer data platforms

Your CRM or CDP powers your sales, retention, and marketing strategy. If customer data syncs poorly, every team downstream feels it.

Platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Bloomreach Engagement depend on a clean, consistent flow of customer records, field updates, subscription status, and marketing preferences. Make sure these rules are mapped early.

BI and data pipelines

Executives rely on accurate reporting. If your data pipeline breaks during the migration, you lose visibility.

Whether you push Shopify data into a warehouse or use connectors such as Fivetran or Stitch/Qlik, confirm that orders, customers, refunds, and tracking events land in the correct format. This is an easy area to overlook, but costly to fix later.

Returns and exchanges

Returns shape customer experience almost as much as checkout. A slow or confusing process leads to frustration and lost repeat purchases.

Loop
A leading returns platform for Shopify Plus. Fast return flows, exchanges, post-purchase upsells, and clean automation.

Swap Commerce
A modern alternative with a strong focus on quick exchanges and flexible workflows, ideal for brands with higher return volumes.

Before you launch

Testing is critical. Run real order flows, test payments, subscriptions, loyalty, reviews, returns, exchanges, and warehouse routing. The more scenarios you simulate now, the fewer surprises you will see at launch.

Remember, a migration is also a great chance to do some house cleaning and simplify. Removing tools that no longer fit your workflow will make your store faster, lighter, and easier to maintain long-term.

Three ways to migrate a store to Shopify

Once you understand what needs to move, the next question is how you want to handle the migration itself. There are three paths most brands take. Each one has tradeoffs, and each one fits a different type of store.

1. Do it yourself with a manual migration

A manual migration sounds simple at first. Copy your data from the old platform, paste it into Shopify, and rebuild what you need. The problem is scale. If you have a large catalog, variations, images, and real order history, manual work is time-consuming and error-prone.

Manual migrations also create the highest chance of human error. A missing image, a duplicated product, a mistyped price, or a broken variant may not seem like much on its own, but these mistakes compound quickly.

If you choose this route, accuracy depends completely on your team’s experience and discipline.

2. Do it yourself with automated tools

Shopify offers tools that automate much of the migration process. There are multiple free and paid apps that can move data from platforms such as Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. They move products, customers, and order history, and you do not need advanced technical skills to use them.

If you want more control and flexibility, use Matrixify. It lets you import and export products, customers, orders, files, and metafields in bulk. It is powerful, fast, and ideal when you need to restructure data during the migration.

Even with automation, the rule stays the same. Clean data in means clean data out. If your source data is messy or inconsistent, automated tools will carry every problem straight into Shopify.

3. Done for you with a migration partner

If you have a large catalog, complex product logic, custom features, international storefronts, or deep integrations with ERP and OMS systems, a DIY migration can become risky. This is where a done-for-you migration makes sense.

A professional migration removes guesswork and protects your SEO, design, redirects, and operational systems. You avoid duplicate products, broken URLs, incorrect pricing, lost customer data, and fulfillment issues. Your business stays focused while an expert team handles the details that matter.

If you want support, our team can manage the entire migration from start to finish.

Examples of successful Shopify Plus migrations

Countless mid-market and enterprise brands have already moved to Shopify. While I cannot cover every example, the ones below highlight what the migration results look like when it is done well.

In general, due to our internal processes, we see almost no loss of traffic after a migration.

John’s Crazy Socks

John Cronin, a young entrepreneur with Down Syndrome, contemplated his post-high school career options. John didn’t like his options, so he went to his father, Mark Cronin, for help. That conversation became the idea for Crazy Socks, the family’s successful eCommerce business. The business is so successful that a single traffic surge on its previous platform nearly put it out of business. It was time for an upgrade, and they chose Shopify Plus. 

Since upgrading to Shopify Plus, Crazy Socks has grown exponentially, generating $4 million in 22 short months. But that’s not all. Since Crazy Socks is a social enterprise, they’ve donated $170K to charities, including the Special Olympics. And to top it off, Crazy Socks has a YoY growth rate of 2,067% in recurring revenue.

Tilley

Tilley, a Canadian heritage brand with roots in the outdoors, wanted to transition from a wholesale business model to a digital-first business. To accomplish this, Tilley needed a growth strategy and an agile eCommerce platform that could deliver reliably. 

They chose Shopify Plus. Leveraging apps like Klaviyo (email marketing), Gorgias (helpdesk), and Okendo (customer loyalty), Tilley hit the ground running hard and fast. The results? A 200% YoY increase in conversions, a 142% increase in month-to-month transactions, and a 121% increase in month-to-month revenue.

Sarris Candies

Looking to modernize their digital storefront, the premium chocolates and sweet treats retailer partnered with Shero to move from a legacy custom .NET system to the more scalable, mobile-friendly, and marketing-flexible Shopify Plus.

To achieve its goal, we helped the brand set up a stylish storefront and implement advanced custom features. Users can now create custom bar wrappers, cakes, and assortments. Customers can design their own chocolate bars by changing fonts, wrap colors, flavour, adding personalized text, filling a box with their favourite chocolates, and previewing designs and assortments in real time.

Additional Shopify Migration Resources

To help your team plan a smooth move to Shopify, we prepared a set of resources that support the strategy, SEO, and operations behind a successful migration. These documents expand on the steps covered in this guide and give you practical tools you can use with your internal team or your agency partner.

You can access them here:

Shopify Migration Checklist: SEO and Strategy Edition

A detailed checklist that covers the technical, content, and SEO steps required before, during, and after your migration. It includes redirects, data mapping, core web vitals checks, content reviews, product data audits, and all the items leadership teams need to validate before launch.

Shopify Migration Timeline

A timeline template that shows how long each part of a migration typically takes based on the size and complexity of your store. It outlines tasks for product setup, theme development, integrations, QA, SEO, and launch preparation, so you can align your teams around a shared plan.

Migration SEO Data Document

A central place to collect and track all the SEO information required for launch. This includes your redirects, URL mapping, top-performing pages, metadata, rankings, internal links, structured data, and page-level priorities. It makes sure nothing important is lost during the transition.

Each resource is available as a Google document that your team can copy and customize for your migration.

Shopify migration checklist

Finally, here’s all you need to remember when migrating to Shopify. It might seem a little overwhelming, but working with an agency can help ease your mind and lighten your workload. If you don’t currently have an agency you’re working with, we’d love to help. As an official Shopify partner, we have experience migrating stores of all sizes.

You might not need all of the above, but these are the most important steps.

Conclusion: You can only get it right once

From my experience, the parts of a migration that matter most are 301 redirects and 404 monitoring once the site goes live. That is where rankings and revenue are won or lost. Get those right and the rest of the launch becomes much safer.

If you want support from a team that handles this work every day, we are here to help. Shero is a Shopify Premier partner with more than a decade of migration experience. Book a meeting with us today!